Pick of the Week Podcast

01.11.2009 – Episode #166 – Hellboy The Wild Hunt #2

Show Notes

Running Time: 00:59:59

January 11, 2009 – Ron is back and it’s a light week of books that leads Josh to spread some love to Hellboy.

Comics:00:001:55 – Josh’s Pick of the Week – Hellboy: The Wild Hunt #2 – reminded him why he loves Mignola’s world so much.00:11:36 – Rick Remender and Jerome Opena brought it in Punisher #1.00:16:33 – Ron was totally crushing on Blue Monday: Thieves Like Us #1.00:19:48 – Conor shocks the world with his thoughts on Secret Invasion: War of Kings!00:26:31 – Amazing Spider-Man #582 brings the old-school fun.00:28:38 – The art in Jonah Hex #39 didn’t endear itself to Josh and Conor.00:30:26 – The Walking Dead #57 made Josh appreciate sound effects.00:33:36 – Paul Dini is achieving the impossible in Detective Comics #862. Make him stop!User Reviews:00:36:39 – biftec loved Buffy the Vampire Slayer #21 with some reservations.00:39:24 – Templar loves Gail Simone on Secret Six #5.E-Mail:00:41:15 – Gary Lewis has a few questions about comics and money.00:46:05 – Ed from Canberra, Australia wants to know who iFanboy thinks The Punisher should kill.Voice Mail:00:48:09 – Darrel is back and he’s not happy with Mark Millar!

Download

Subscribe

Get Involved

Doing the podcast is fun and all, but let's be honest, listening to the 3 of us talk to each other can get repetitive, so we look to you, the iFanboy listeners to participate in the podcast! "How can I get in on the fun?" you may ask yourself, well here's how:

E-Mail us at contact@ifanboy.com with any questions, comments or anything that may be on your mind.

Call us at 1-888-FANBOYS (326-2697) and leave a voicemail

Please don't forget to leave your name and where you're writing/calling from and each week, we'll pick the best e-mails and voicemails to include on the podcast!

The thing that some Hellboy fans might not know is that the second Library Edition hc reads in chronological order. This isn’t simply slapping vol. 3 & 4 of the trades together. These stories were not in chronological order when they were orginally collected. The gang involved with Hellboy did a great job putting the stories in their proper order for this hc. It almost felt like reading them for the first time.

Seriously though. I heard on another podcast that the printing and paper costs don’t matter much in the overall pricing decisions, but I can see how exclusive creator contracts and marketing can drive the price up an extra dollar. I’d like to see over the long haul how this plays out in regards to indie comics. Will more people be drawn to pick up indie comiics they’ve heard about before because they might actually be cheaper per month or will they just bite the bullet and keep buying Spidey and Daredevil and JLA at 4 bucks a pop? Top Cow has the right idea in mind by advertising they’re staying at $2.99. Let readers know that their may be an alternative out there for them if they can’t take that hit for their Marvel or DC fix.

@Conor-Chris Neseman talked extensivly about paper cost in the latest episode of 11 o’clock comics. Because of his line of work he seems very knowledgable about paper prices and buying in bulk and said that the price difference in paper quality is not as much as what people think.

@drakedangerz: "The price difference in paper quality sounds" like he was talking about the idea that it wouldn’t make comics that much cheaper to go to a lower paper quality. Because paper prices are skyrocketing across the board.

@Conor-Yeah, sorry bout that. I listened to it again and he is indeed making that point.

I forgot to mention earlier, I also plan on picking up War of Kings. Not so much the tie-ins. Like Josh, playing it by ear. I keep hearing great things about Guardians and Nova, so I might actually start picking those up. Any good jump on points for those two that don’t require me picking up the past trades?

So I’ve got a comment I’ve wanted to make about this paper quality issue since it’s become a hot topic on all the comic podcasts lately.

I’m the sort of reader that treats his comics like the disposable entertainment they are, which isn’t to say that I don’t keep them/re-read them/treasure them in my own way, but I certainly couldn’t care less about how glossy the paper is or how long they’ll last. The moment I walk out of the comic shop on Wednesdays, I roll my books up, shove them in my back pocket, and go to a local bar to environment, have light coming in from all over place and very often I cannot for the life of see what’s on the page because of the glare. It doesn’t matter how I hold the book, it’s usually impossible to read.

Yes, it’s a stupid nitpick and I’m not under any illusion that a lot of people feel this way but I thought it might be an interesting 3rd option in the good paper/high prices vs. bad paper/low prices debate. Does fancy paper ruin anyone else’s reading experience? I literally groan every time a book I like comes out in that Ultimate line shiny format.

On a related note, it was Chris Neisman on 11 O’clock Comics who brought up the paper isn’t the reason prices are going up argument. Obviously he was drunk and rambly, but his points did sound somewhat reasonable.

I believe conor when he says the prices would’ve gone up no matter how much paper prices went up.

But you guys can say you dont want 70′s-80′s type of paper in your comics…..But when the prices go to 4.99 or higher, you’ll want some excuse to get the prices back down again. I dont care about the paper quality to be honest; as long as the art and writing is as good as it is on paper I’ll buy a comic.

What’s more disturbing about that porno scene I put up for conor and josh is that conor was dressed up as Batman for that scene…..Getting a bit too much insight for conor.

I was also disappointed in the "Buffy" issue. I thought it was a fun concept, but the story felt rushed, and the humor fell flat. I was always a big fan of the Harmony character, but what I thought was great about her was that (despite being an amoral vampire) she was actually pretty sweet (when she wasn’t killing people). This just portrayed her as a shallow bitch (which is what she was like in high school before she became a vampire, so it really destroyed the gag that made her character work).

MrBeebs37 is my hero. I’m also in favour of cheaper paper – generally. Yes, some comic artists are so good that their art demands better paper but most artists would look just fine on the paper used for the Johnny DC books.

I passed over War of Kings, but you made it sound great. Downplaying the inclusion of the rubbish Vulcan helped, I suppose.

Detective was indeed excellent, Paul and Dustin did the biz. Did you deliberately avoid mentioning the surprise guest star to let people have a surprise?

By the way, in the middle of the 2nd paragraph of my post, there should be a bit about how I take my comics to the bar so I can drink/eat/read at the same time and the lighting there makes glossy comics nearly impossible to read. Apparently I decided to delete that part before posting, which admittedly, was a weird decision.

re – Secret Six: Connor should try it out at the very least. I would think that a Batman fan would be curious about Bane as a pseudo good guy (with a weirdly sexual daddy/daughter relationship with Vandal Savage’s kid) as well as a clever play on the Batman/Catwoman relationship in the form of Catman and Huntress having a fling that Batman doesn’t approve of. Does that not sound like fun comicing?

I think it’s a shame that the boys don’t read Secret Six (or Thor for that matter) as I’d like to hear their comments about these excellent books. I mean, I know they already read a big fat stack each week, but they’re missing out on some really good stuff!

Ok, so here’s an idea for a podcast – "the books we didn’t read" where the boys read a stack of recommended books they usually ignore and report back on whether or not they enjoyed them.

Garrett – it was sort of done already… the manga video show, the totebag video show, the show about Sandman, and they sometimes mention that other people told them about the books they show in their videos.

The recent gift giving post might yield something.

And there have been video shows that show things they usually don’t talk about like the Mike Allred show, the indy vault, etc.

Okay, I’m pulling this all from memory here, but from what I remember in the 80s is that one of the main reasons they upgraded from newsprint to what was called "Baxter paper" is because the newsprint got really expensive. Increase in quality was a secondary concern. So downgrading to that lower-grade paper may not make comics cheaper at all. This may not be at all accurate, and maybe someone in the know can shed more light on the topic.

I think part of the story there, and the humiliation of it was that it WAS Mysterio. Enchantress is a goddess, so it’s understandable. What makes the knife cut deeper? That it was just a dude with some special effects?